Writing in Biology

The function of the muscular layer of the ductus deferens is to assist in ejaculation. During ejaculation, the smooth muscle would contract, which would create pulsating contraction waves. The contractions would propel the sperms from the ductus (vas) deferens to the urethra. The innervation of the testicular vessels extends from L2. There are postganglionic axons that are in the lumbar and sacral regions. Splanchnic nerves carry the signal through the inferior mesenteric plexus, aortic plexus and hypogastric plexus to the pelvic organs. The pelvic organs would include the muscular layer of the spermatic cord. The arterial blood that supplies the spermatic cord is received from the long testicular arteries. The long testicular arteries branch from the aorta in the superior abdomen.

    For the longest time, Asian Americans, Asian Australians, Asian Europeans, and all of these mixes of Western and Eastern heritages felt underrepresented by the media. There were very few Asian actors who spoke fluent English, and spoke their mother tongue as well. These groups of people felt very underrepresented by the media, and for a while there were no outlets that allowed these groups of people to talk and relate with each other. There were very few examples that come to mind during that time (early/late 2000s), such as Nigahiga, Wong Fu Productions, Kevjumba, who were all on Youtube. There was this bubbling of an underground identity that was waiting to explode, and that is where SAT, or rather Subtle Asian Traits comes in. Back in the last quarter of 2018, there was a Facebook group called Subtle Asian Traits that was a private group that was curating memes and relatable content from this identity that these people could relate to. Because the group was private and you needed someone in the group to add you into it, it sort of became this exclusive online club where people could join and relate to one another. Eventually, the group blew up and suddenly, all of these people who felt underrepresented had an outlet to go to that allowed them to feel connected and represented. This group was an outlet that was needed for a lot of people, which is what lead to the virality of the Facebook group.

    Most birds use 5 to 14 different vocal structures to produce a song. The experiment was done with the Chaffinch of Europe and was found that there was 12 different sounds all used for different purposes: territorial, mate, predator, etc. In songbirds, it is not unique if a bird species have individualized songs, 100 call patterns, or a very complex song that characterises that bird specie. Syntax, phase, pitch are all calculated by these birds and the combination of them turns into a song to communicate with one another. For example Black-Capped Chickadees have a distinctive alarm call that yells “dee-dee-dee.” The number of times Chickadee calls “dee” correlates with how dangerous the predator is. So the more alarm you hear, it is more likely the predator is an owl or a hawk.

The songs produced by each birds are diverse. Some can be short and high note, other can be long note. Frequency and amplitudes can be studied by creating a graph to visually study the sound of the birds. The higher amplitude it is, the louder song is produced by the bird.  The difference between a song and a call is that songs have patterns, syllables and phrases where a call is a short simple sound. Calls are used for multiple situations for defense, conversation and other uses where calls are mostly used to attract mates. Most songs are similar to human songs. Each bird has their very own type of call and vocalization to attract mates. Based on the tempo and frequency is what attracts neighbors and predators. Sound travels much farther distance so using that physical property, birds can communicate with a larger range of birds. Not only the vocalization produced by the bird itself, but also the environment can affect how the bird is heard by others. Some birds like Great Tits that live in the urban area adapted a vocalization that will not be erased from the traffic noise caused by human activities and other loudness.

The slope is 1.01 and the intercept is approximately 0 (-6.03E-3). The relationship between the angles should be that they are either equal or very close in value. According to Snell’s law the sines of the angles should only differ by the two different indices of refraction. One index being air (1) and the other index should be very close to 1 as the difference between the values of sin incident and refraction should be the other index of reflection.

The conclusions that can be drawn from the results is that Sulfolobus Spindle Shaped Virus (SSV) developed an escape mutation whenever a dip in the bacterial population of Sulfolobus was observed. This means that at any of these instances the SSV was able to mutate to again be able to kill the Sulfolobus. On the graph when there was more diversity and distribution within the immune systems of Sulfolobus the bacterial cells were significantly less susceptible to SSV infection. From the results it can also be concluded that Sulfolobus and SSV have a mutualistic relationship. The SSV uses host machinery to create and secrete a toxin that kills healthy uninfected cells. This also implies that infected cells are immune to the toxin is that the SSV provides infected cells with an antitoxin keeping them safe. This relationship is considered mutualism because the bacterial cells essentially want to be infected in order to survive.

The conclusions that are drawn from these results is that SSV developed an escape mutation whenever a dip in the bacterial population of Sulfolobus was shown. This means that at any of these instances the SSV was able to mutate to again be able to kill Sulfolobus. On the graph when there was more diversity and distribution within the immune systems of Sulfolobus the bacterial cells were significantly less susceptible to SSV infection. The conclusion relating to the Sulfolobus and SSV having a mutualistic relationship is something that I have never seen nor thought about before. The SSV uses host machinery to create and secrete a toxin that kills healthy uninfected cells. The conclusion as to why infected cells are immune to the toxin is that the SSV provides infected cells with an antitoxin keeping them safe. This relationship is considered mutualism because the bacterial cells essentially want to be infected in order to survive. A conclusion about P. aeruginosa infections in humans with chronic CF is that each human is an island population that host the P. aeruginosa and a phage with an anti-CRISPR system which has ways of making CRISPR immunity less effective.

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is characterized as a progressive weakness of muscles along with a shortened life span. As of today, there is no successful treatment. DMD is an inherited disease found on the X sex chromosome. Recently, a study demonstrated editing of the mice germline, using CRISPR/Cas9, to correct the dystrophin gene (Dmd) mutation. After monitoring muscle structure and function animals showed “2 to 100% correction of the Dmd gene”. The results reflected effective regeneration of muscle of the corrected cells, which gives hope that this could be a new treatment for disease-causing mutations in muscle cells for patients suffering by DMD.